The present invention is directed to the field of energy consumption management analysis, consumption management systems, electrical distribution grid demand charge management, and related fields.
Rising prices for electricity and increased incentives for consumers who operate efficiently have been influential in developing and broadening the market for electricity consumption management systems. These systems influence the consumer's load by strategically providing additional energy to (or decreasing the energy consumed by) loads at a site through means such as photovoltaic energy sources, “smart” thermostats, uninterruptible power supplies, load shedding controllers, load displacement battery systems, and other features and systems well known in the art.
While many technologies have been developed for optimizing the usage of control devices and systems, they are difficult to implement in conjunction with each other due to their disparate sources, interfaces, and situations in which they are effective. Furthermore, difficulty in predicting the load management needs of the consumer leads to the provision and installation of management services and devices that will have an unpredictable impact on the consumption of the site. Thus, the devices put in place are frequently not ideally suited to the needs of the site's individualized load profile. This leads to inefficient expense of capital and other difficult up-front decisions about how to best approach energy consumption management for a particular site.